


Mile Markers

by EchoThruTheWoods



Category: Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, ffviiturkweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 19:37:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16625171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoThruTheWoods/pseuds/EchoThruTheWoods
Summary: A conversation in the back of a van.





	Mile Markers

When the gun fires the second time, Veld is still looking at Elfe’s body, at the dark stain on her green tunic. There’s a muffled pop, a burst of pain. Time stops.

When he comes to, he’s flat on his back. It’s mostly dark, with intermittent flashes of light. Whatever surface he’s lying on jostles him, side to side, and underneath him is low, steady rumbling, like a half-remembered voice.

A hazy afterglow tints the air. He smells blood.

Someone is crouched beside him, a rustle of cloth and a breathy sigh.

Veld squints into the green-tinted darkness. “Valentine?”

The figure goes still. “It’s Tseng.”

Time sputters, steadies, shaping order out of chaos. Months condense into weeks, into days, hours. Pieces slot into place.

Wasteland, Shinra, gunshots. Tseng, drawing his gun with a swift, sure movement, eyes blank, while the fingers of his other hand flash a sign that only Turks can read.

The rumbling is an engine. They’re in the back of a van. It’s night. They’ve escaped.

“...Felicia...?”

“On your other side,” says Tseng. He shifts, settling cross-legged with his back to a wall.

Veld turns his head, his left hand searching. Metal fingers slide over the ragged scar on the top of Felicia’s right hand. His brain tells him he’s got those fingers wrapped around flesh and blood, but steel and synthetic can’t feel warmth, can’t feel life. It’s not good enough.

He stretches his right hand across his body, to hers. Felicia’s skin is fever-hot, pulled tight over the bones, pulse steady under his touch. Her hand is square and blocky, like his, capable and strong. He strokes his thumb along the scar.

From ribs to spine, his bones ache, and from neck to skull. Cure has left a taste in the back of his throat like he’s gagged on a rusty spoon.

Veld says over his shoulder, “When will she wake? Do you know?”

“When Sleep wears off. Cure was particularly hard on her,” says Tseng, “following the effects of the Summon.”

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe, I hope.”

“Ah. Who’s driving?”

“Balto. He was...quite insistent. Shall I give him any specific directions?”

“Depends on where we are.”

Tseng opens the sliding window on the wall behind Veld, to ask Balto.

“Okay,” says Veld, on hearing the answer. “I know a place.”

Tseng passes the information to Balto, and sits down again.

"The others?” says Veld.

“Covering for the three of us.”

Balto and Tseng may very well be the last two Turks that Veld ever sees. He’s running away from everything he’s built, everyone he knows. He figures he got off lightly.

The faint green flicker of the bangle on Tseng’s wrist catches Veld’s eye. “Thank you,” he says, remembering that Turk sign, that barest touch of hope. “For both of us, but especially for Felicia.”

“You’re welcome,” says Tseng, neither modest nor mocking, “but, sir… chief…”

“Just Veld. I’m nobody’s chief anymore.” He turns to look at Tseng. “What is it?”

“This.” Tseng waves a hand, encompassing the van, Felicia, Veld himself, maybe the night outside and the mess they’ve left behind. “Everything. Leaving the Turks, defying Shinra, throwing your whole life away.”

There’s an undercurrent to Tseng’s voice. His words tumble over it like a boat running rapids. He smells like ozone and sweat, a hint of sulphur.

“It could be worse,” says Veld. “I could be dead.”

“In essence, you _have_ died. You can’t be Veld or Verdot or anyone connected to Shinra anymore. You once brought the president himself to heel, threatening to expose him to get your job back.” Tseng’s voice goes bitter at the core. Like almonds, like cyanide. “The job you walked away from.”

“All of this is true,” Veld sighs. He’s too tired to lift his head, too strung out to put up an argument. The rear window shines briefly as they pass a lone highway lamp, throwing Tseng’s profile into sharp relief.

“Are you asking a question, Tseng?” Because he can't parse the anger, and he can’t challenge the accusations.

“I…” says Tseng, and stops. A mile or two go by in silence. Veld waits, holding Felicia’s hand.

“Is it worth it?” says Tseng. “Losing it all?”

“It isn’t what I lost that matters,” says Veld. He regrets the words immediately, the truth that’s too personal, too pointed. His brain’s not yet keeping pace with his tongue. “What I meant....it’s about what I got back, Tseng.”

“Forgive me, but...you hardly know this woman. How can you be certain that she’s your daughter?”

It’s a fair question, on the surface. He’d ask the same were he in Tseng’s place. Since Kalm, he’s stood apart, leading by example, not emotion, steering with his head and his hands, not his heart. He’d taken pride in it.

Hearing her speak, once, as Elfe, had shattered all of that.

“I know her.”  

Tseng’s silence has a ragged edge. Exhaustion, Veld thinks. One Cure, two people an inch away from death by two precisely-placed bullets, a rapidly-closing window of time to bring them both back from the brink.

It would’ve simplified everything, if he’d revived only one of them. That he didn’t is a gift.

Veld needs more, starting with the answer to a question.

“Are you coming with us? Or heading off on your own?”

“No.” Tseng straightens up, braced by the wall. “I’ll be going home.”

“Are you sure?”

“I have a place there,” says Tseng, with utter conviction. “People who depend on me.” They both know he’s not talking about Shinra itself.

It’s what Veld would have said, what he would have done. Tseng was an apt pupil. Maybe - probably - too much so, but here and now, the masks are off, and neither of them has any use for regrets.

“They’ll be watching you closely,” says Veld, “for a long time to come.”

“I’m prepared for that.”

It’s mission planning, what they’re doing now, like the old days, though it hasn’t been this personal since Kalm. Like that time, Veld can’t afford miscommunication.

“They have to believe I’m dead,” he says. “That you killed us both. I realize what I’m asking of you.”

To keep up the fiction. To keep secrets, from the president, from Rufus, from the board of directors. No Turk lives forever, but Tseng’s likely got at least a decade to go, maybe more.

“Understood,” says Tseng, just as crisp and clear as though they were in the office, but Veld is no longer sure which of them is behind the desk. There’s another flash of light, another street lamp passing.

“What if they ask you about the bodies?”

Tseng shrugs. “Buried in the wasteland.”

“And if they still demand proof?”

“I can find bodies if I need them,” says Tseng, ruthlessly practical. “As for identification … Monsters. Animals. Not much left.”

Another few miles go by. Veld’s eyes close. Fatigue is a weight on him, pulling him down, through the pain, beyond it. The van turns, once, twice, bumping hard. Felicia stirs, and Veld jerks awake. He squeezes her hand gently. She settles back into sleep. Veld finds a smile in the darkness.

“How are you going to live?” says Tseng, soft-voiced. “Can you truly hide from Shinra?”

He might be talking to himself, but Veld answers anyway. “I didn’t spend the last few years chasing shadows. Been planning my own death since the day I saw Felicia at the reactor. Didn’t know the time or the place, but I knew who the actors would be.”

“You gambled your life, and your daughter’s, on that? What if he’d sent only SOLDIER after you?”

“I know how he thinks. Sending the Turks--sending you--was deliberate.”

“Then you gambled your lives on me.”

“Well.” Veld shrugs. “The odds were good.”

“Life is not a poker game,” Tseng reminds him, dry as road dust.

“Who told you that?”

“You did.”

Veld snorts, breaks into a cough that strains his aching ribs. He lets go of Felicia, props himself up on his metal elbow. Tseng hands him a bottle of water. Veld knows better than to gulp it down, but all things considered, he’d rather have whiskey, and honestly, fuck old age.

On the other hand, he’s still breathing. So is his daughter. Life is good.

Tseng eases him onto his back again. “Any further orders, sir?”

The honorific is rote; Veld pretends he hasn’t heard it. “Not from me. You’re in charge now.”

“When I get back to Midgar. Not before.”

Tseng always has steel in his voice, but this is different. More tempered. He’ll bend and flex, but he won’t break. These past four years were the forge, last night’s decision the proof test. Veld is fairly certain that President Shinra doesn’t know how easily a weapon can turn in his hand.

Veld can let go now. The thought hits hard, sending him into freefall. He blinks, fighting vertigo.

“Then it’s official,” he says. “Consider this my resignation, effective when you drop us off.”

There’s an awkward moment, when Tseng clasps the hand Veld offers to seal the deal, but his grip is firm.

“Who are you now?” Tseng asks. “Who will you be?”

Veld thinks about that. He finds earth to ground him, a solid place to stand.

“I’ll be a father, as much as she’ll let me.”

He can see Felicia’s face now, as the first pale rays of dawn filter through the dusty window. A grown woman, almost a stranger, and here they are, making plans over her head. She probably doesn’t need him anymore, will tell him so to his face. But...

“I’d like the chance to get to know her.”

It’s about time he made the effort. This time, he might even succeed.

 


End file.
